Rarely has a kitchen sink featured so heavily in a so-called kitchen-sink drama. One of many appealing features of Arnold Wesker’s modern classic Roots (1959) — the middle play in his famous social conscience and working class-centred trilogy, sandwiched between Chicken Soup with Barley and I’m Talking about Jerusalem — is its transfixing brand of naturalism. Abundant moments pass in contemplative potato-peeling or idle chatter about bus timetables, and there’s some superlative wordless business which establishes that this is a world in which women take ready-for-chores pinnies when they go visiting. James Macdonald’s supremely confident production feels no need to hurry such scenes and is amply the richer for it.

Beatie (Call the Midwife star Jessica Raine) is a lively young woman with a socialist boyfriend, tendencies towards self-improvement and the admirable but self-righteous conviction of youth. Back from London to visit her taciturn farm-worker family in rural Norfolk, she has an acute case of mention-itis when it comes to boyfriend Ronnie. Indeed, the drama builds towards a climactic act three tea when Ronnie is to meet as much of the Bryant clan as is on speaking terms. Across Raine’s face scud fast-moving rainclouds of emotion, passion followed by frustration at the banality of her interaction with her family.

She’s magnificently matched by Linda Bassett, who can convey more while silently slicing a runner bean than most actors could with a page-long monologue. Beatie’s mother, grimly stoic in the face of fluctuations in her husband’s labourer’s wage, is apt to dismiss all culture as “squit”. After a slightly wan first act, the drama gains strength with Bassett’s arrival onto Hildegard Bechtler’s wooden-beamed range and then builds to a crescendo of quiet but unmistakable impact.